Press Release

Qatar Solar Technologies (QSTec), a member of Qatar Foundation, was awarded the Best GCC Integrated Solar Company Award in recognition for its advancement along the solar value chain by World Finance magazine, a highly prestigious bi-monthly publication that comprehensively covers and analyzes the global financial industry, international business arena and the world economy.

Qatar Solar Technologies (QSTec), a member of Qatar Foundation, was awarded the Best GCC Integrated Solar Company Award in recognition for its advancement along the solar value chain by World Finance magazine, a highly prestigious bi-monthly publication that comprehensively covers and analyzes the global financial industry, international business arena and the world economy. Dr. Khalid Klefeekh Al Hajri, Chairman and CEO, QSTec, was invited to attend the award ceremony, which was filmed in the London Stock Exchange Studios (LSE) in London, United Kingdom.

“We would like to thank Qatar Foundation, SolarWorld, Qatar Development Bank, Centrotherm and our staff for the instrumental role they have played in all of our successes. This award serves as an affirmation that QSTec is realizing its vision to become a world leading integrated solar company through a strategy that has seen it expand from Doha right across the world,” said Dr. Al Hajri. “The consortium between QSTec, SolarWorld and Centrotherm was developed to share knowledge, utilize each other’s key strengths and improve costs and efficiencies, and to win this award based on our strategic direction for advancement is very encouraging for QSTec and the region’s solar industry.”

In the post-award interviews at the LSE studios, Dr Al Hajri stated that the two greatest challenges for the renewable energy sector was the need to continually drive down costs to make renewables even more cost competitive with other forms of electricity production, and the need to make energy storage solutions more available, scalable and at a lower cost. However, Dr. Al Hajri emphasized that the solution involved stakeholders uniting, in the interest of development, to overcome the fragmentation prevalent in the renewable energy industry and join together to address these key issues. “Our consortium has come together to address these issues head on and we urge others in the industry to collaborate together so we can progress much faster,” said Al Hajri.

Furthermore, Dr. Al Hajri explained that the success of QSTec in constructing the first of its kind polysilicon production facility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region coupled with QSTec strategic investments will play a major role in shaping the MENA regions’ solar industry. The facility will produce 8,000 metric tons of polysilicon and can expand along the value chain to produce over 45,000 tonnes of polysilicon a year. This is will enable the future production of 6.5 gigawatts of solar technologies each year.

World Finance has celebrated the successes of businesses, from a wide range of industries, in their yearly awards since 2007. Supported by a dedicated team of researchers in respective fields, judges, with over 230 collective years of financial and business journalism experience, determine winners amongst both smaller market participants, as well as larger firms, operating across the globe annually.